Humans did not have language until approximately 10,000 years ago, and writing and cognitive intelligence developed only in the last 10,000 to 20,000 years.
"We didn't have language up to, I don't know, 10,000 years ago; we didn't know how to write. This cognitive part has developed in the last maybe 10, 20,000 years." (said at 0:22:15)
The claim that humans did not have language until approximately 10,000 years ago and that cognitive intelligence only emerged in the last 10,000 to 20,000 years is contradicted by archaeological, paleoanthropological, and genetic consensus. Anatomically and cognitively modern *Homo sapiens* evolved over 100,000 to 300,000 years ago in Africa, displaying complex symbolic behavior, tool manufacturing, and language capacities tens to hundreds of thousands of years before the 10,000-year mark (for example, language and complex cognitive capacities were already established prior to human migrations out of Africa and the peopling of Australia at least 50,000 to 65,000 years ago). While the speaker's secondary mention that writing was absent prior to recent millennia is accurate (true writing systems first emerged around ~5,000 to 5,500 years ago in Mesopotamia and Egypt), spoken language and human cognitive capacities long predate the 10,000-to-20,000-year timeline.
- contradicts: Language and modern human origins (American Journal of Physical Anthropology 1993)
"Instead, there appears to be archaeological and paleontological evidence for complex language capabilities beginning much earlier, with the evolution of the genus Homo." (abstract, conclusions, passage verified)
openalexfull study (doi) - contradicts: Hominin cognitive evolution: identifying patterns and processes in the fossil and archaeol… (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 2012)
"Brain size change at approximately 100 kya is coincident with demographic change and the appearance of fully modern language." (abstract, conclusions, passage verified)
openalexfull study (doi) - contradicts: The revolution that still isn't: The origins of behavioral complexity in Homo sapiens (Journal of Human Evolution 2023)
"Finally, we note a weakening link between 'modern' human biology and behavior from around 300 ka ago." (abstract, conclusions, passage verified)
openalexfull study (doi)